


Running Up that Hill

by BluestNovember



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Flashbacks, Non-Consensual, Rape, non-con
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:48:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19469011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluestNovember/pseuds/BluestNovember
Summary: The fall of the Republic star-crosses two lovers expecting their first child. Starcy/ the Handmaid's Tale crossover.





	1. Chapter 1

Aunt Lydia zipped the red dress up my back. “Ah, that’s better, now, isn’t it?” she asked. The air was humid and the fabric stuck to my arms, up to my collar bone. She wasn’t done.

She twisted my hair up into a ponytail and then put the habit with blinders over my head, like I was some kind of animal in a yoke.

“Now, you look like a respectable woman, isn’t that better?” she asked. “Now, you can redeem yourself for such an awful act.”

I pressed my lips together, feeling them chap from lack of moisture. They didn’t allow us toiletries asides from the basics: soap and shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, one hair brush, a jar of Vaseline. To think just ten months ago, I had been in the man I loved’s arms and dreading going to work on Monday, wishing the weekend could last a little longer. Now, I was a lady in red, trying to redeem myself in this wet dream of the Tea Party. I’d have been on the wall if my baby wasn’t growing in my stomach.

We had let things go too far before we realized it was too late. We were shamed for being activists and wanting rights to our bodies. I didn’t want to make a bad name for myself, so I shut up. And then, Congress was bombed and the Watts Bar nuclear power plant had a melt down. Birth rates had become almost nonexistent in the last ten years. I couldn’t hide my pregnancy for long, with abortionists being sought out and executed, I was powerless. When women were considered unable to care for themselves, the police arrested me and sent me to Aunt Lydia and the Marthas upon finding out I was unwed and pregnant. My stepfather was hung on the wall, my mother was blamed, and she was sent to Tennessee for the cleanup. I had been tagged like a cow, a tag hung in my ear under the habit. I had had to sit in reeducation classes for five months, where they did nothing but try to break every single one of us. And it had been brutal. I went into labor when one of the new girls protested and mouthed off, and she was dragged out of the classroom and had her eye poked out, and came back in stunned and disoriented. That was a warning to all of us: do not disobey.

I was strapped down to a gurney while a man I had never met before and his dowdy, middle aged wife, dressed in blue with a pinched face, watched, along with the other handmaids.

I gave birth without drugs, without support, with strangers watching my naked body push the baby out.

And they allowed me to hold her for a moment, my milk started coming in.

I got a quick glimpse of her little face, and it was all green and covered in placenta goo. I knew her name and she had her father’s eyes. And I was immediately in love with her. She waved a little hand at me, her right hand had a birth mark on it. A pink ragged line.

Then, they ripped my daughter out of my arms and handed her to the commander and his barren wife, who promptly cried and exclaimed how beautiful  _ her _ daughter was. If I had any energy left, I’d have clawed her eyes out. 

“What about my daughter?” I asked as the Marthas surrounded me and helped me give birth to the placenta.

“That wasn’t your daughter,” Aunt Lydia told me.

“I just gave birth to her,” I snarled.

“You’re disoriented,” she told me. “You need to rest. You did a wonderful thing.”

“I want my daughter!” I sneered.

“Give her some morphine,” Aunt Lydia said. “She’s probably lost a some blood, too. Make sure you harvest her milk first, that baby’s going to need it.”

I had named my daughter already, for the Irish immigrant who had given birth to her father, the woman who, had she not died from cancer, would have been my mother-in-law. And my own mother. It was a good name, he would have appreciated it.

Sarah Katherine.

But I wasn’t allowed to name her. This government didn’t think I should be a mother if I had had his baby without a priest saying we were married. Nobody knew who the baby’s father was, I couldn’t put him on the wall like that.

I had no idea where Steven Grant Rogers was, now, or if he even cared what had become of us, if he was in hiding, still in the military, or had escaped to Canada. All I knew was that he wasn’t on the wall.

And I wasn’t going to give him up.

But I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave Gilead without Sarah Katherine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so flattered that I got 12 kudos on the first chapter! Thank you so much, I’m like WHOA!!!! I hope you all enjoy the next chapter, from Steve’s POV
> 
> Special thank you to SweetLilBullet for encouraging me to write this plot bunny out! 
> 
> Xoxo,  
> Blue

The rain was falling, and stinging my skin with icy pellets. I was used to these kinds of conditions, since basic. But that had been for an entirely different country.

I was stationed outside for eight hours until relief came. I was supposed to be thankful for this post. Instead, I knew it would be miserable.

Gilead was not a happy country. The Tea Party had basically gotten it’s wet dream with a coup in DC. The first thing they did was meltdown a nuclear power plant in the South. The next thing they did was take away all rights from women. I’m not talking about just banning abortion. They took away birth control, social security numbers, and their rights to be seen as autonomous adults. Now, they fell into three categories: the irredeemables, the women who were either lesbians or too old, and could not get pregnant and did not have a man to speak for them: they were usually shipped off to Tennessee for the nuclear cleanup. They didn’t last too long. The only men that went along were the soldiers, like me, who weren’t so lucky, but got lead lined suits, and the “gender traitors”, the transgender, the gay, and the men who had spoken out against the new governmental party. The next group of women were the ones that weren’t outspoken or gender traitors. They either had male guardians (husbands) or were appointed them. They were the Marthas. Most of the older ones who couldn’t get pregnant were considered unmarriable, but were welcomed into households as maids and seamstresses and childcare. The last group, the women in red, were the women who had either spoken out or done things the government didn’t like, but had proved they could get pregnant. They were stripped of their names and families and conscripted to a life of trying to get pregnant against their will. 

In this world, the birth rates had fallen. Humanity was declining, we’d probably die out. Instead of asking women who could have children if they’d do it and be handsomely rewarded, our new, idiotic totalitarian government decided on this system. Because it was the women’s fault for all the birth control they took for years. There was no way there were men who were sterile. Gilead wouldn’t stand for that assumption. Women were the blame for the Fall, they were to blame for the dropping birth rates because… yeah, women were always to blame. Mom told me that when I was a boy, hanging out in the ER waiting room with a coloring book and crayons, and some GI Joes because child care fell through, and I saw women come in, bloodied up by their boyfriends or husbands.

Today, I was standing guard outside a gate for the Pierces’ house. Commander Pierce and his wife, a couple way past their childbearing years, lived here, along with two Marthas and usually one Handmaid. This last Handmaid had been sent away because she couldn’t get pregnant. Was it that she was no longer fertile? The truth was murky, but it was most likely Alexander Pierce’s swimmers. But nobody was allowed to say it. To say that was punishable by the wall. Ofbrock had been shipped off in a black SUV one night, tears running down her face. I wasn’t sure if another posting was better or worse than being sent to Tennessee. Both were equally horrible.

The worst thing I personally thought had happened in this violent revolution had been that Handmaid’s names and identities had been stripped from them. They were not people any longer, but the property of the wealthy and powerful men who could barter for them when their wives were barren.

Today, Pierces’ SUV pulled up to the gate, and I pointed my gun down as the tinted window rolled down to reveal my childhood best friend, James “Bucky” Barnes, the family’s driver. 

“Blessed be the farts,” Bucky said quietly.

I smirked. 

Punk.

Of course, he’d do something like that so close to Pierce and his cronies. Of course, that kind of joking was one of the few moments of humor we managed to sneak in, although if we were caught doing that, we’d get a few lashings for sure. Pierce was probably on his phone in the backseat. He had his wife had apparently left in the early hours in the morning. “May the Lord ...open,” I replied, pushing the button so the gate swung open right as I said it.

And then, I heard something I wasn’t expecting: a little, dry wail.

A baby’s cry.

The Pierces had gotten a child. Probably from a new Handmaiden or a wife from a disgraced Econofamily.

I thought the whole method of it was sick. Forcing women to be raped every month and then calling them the fallen ones needing to redeem themselves? What little had been released about the ceremony was sick. No matter how you dress it up with scripture and involving the wife in it as a body pillow for the Handmaiden, it was still unwanted. It was still sex without consent. Sex without consent is always rape. 

I had had career counseling when the Tea Party had rolled onto base. 

If Darcy hadn’t been pregnant, I’d have mouthed off and let the fuckers shoot me. I was on edge: had she told them about who the father of her pregnancy was? Would they hang me on the wall? 

A part of me felt like a coward, but a part of me felt like a fool.

When Darcy called me from Boston because her bank account had been closed, she was panicked. I had been foolish enough to say, “Relax Doll, I’ll take care of you.” That had only infuriated her. She had let me have it for that. I had written off how bad the Tea Party was going to get, and the horror of what they were going to do. They’re Americans, they talk about keeping their rights, they wouldn’t take the right away of other people. 

But, they had.

When the revolution came, I had been on base, Darcy was home at her mother’s brownstone in Boston. She had gone home to her mother’s house from the lab she worked at in Brooklyn. That phone call was the last I had ever heard from her. 

I was sweating bullets in the barracks when the Tea Party commanders came through, recruiting us. I fought back to the urge to tell them to go fuck themselves, but I knew that if I died, I’d never get back to Darcy. Maybe, when they found out I was her baby’s father, they’d give me an opportunity to make her an honest woman and we’d stay together. I had no idea that they were beginning to round up possibly fertile women to reeducate them in centers. I didn’t hear from her for weeks, and I was panicked. She was constantly on my mind. Were they DNA testing to find the children’s true fathers? What would happen if Darcy’s pregnancy was DNA tested and it lead back to me? Would they go easy on me because women couldn’t be trusted or would I get hanged? A part of me wished I had been shot. But a part of me held onto hope that I’d find Darcy and the baby and get them out of here. But escape was becoming more and more impossible with the military state. The propaganda said that criminals were running for the border, but never got across.

I asked about her, called around. At the same time, I was being sent to find girls who could bear children and catch them, round them up onto told school buses, drop them off at a reeducation center.

I had participated. But, that the only way to find her and the baby.

“I could see you becoming a Commander,” my Lieutenant told me. “You could have great political power, Captain Rogers. You seem like someone the new Republic of Gilead could look up to: excellent military record, a gleaming sacrament record in the Catholic Church, and a handsome face. Handsome men tend to get more votes and more supporters.”

“What does a commander do?” I asked.

“The commanders will be the leaders of the new Republic. We’ll set examples and assign a proper wife for you, and you’ll help make rules governing the country. If you play your cards right, you could become a very powerful man in a very short period of time. Gilead needs leaders. Are you up to the challenge?”

I knew the only way out was through. “Yes, sir. I am.”

Then, the news came that all unmarried, pregnant women were being recruited as Handmaids, and would be in service of the commanders. When I read an article on the internet about how Handmaids would be expected to conceive children in the most ‘natural’ way, I got sick. Then, like North Korea, the internet was censored and anything decrying the new Republic was blocked.

This was Darcy’s future. And I had just let it happen. Handmaids were dressed in red for a reason: they were unmarriageable. I had missed my window to save her because I had failed to propose before the coup because I had been a punk, indeed. She was the best thing to ever happen to me, and I had avoided asking her to marry me because I wasn’t sure she’d say yes. But if she had, we’d all be safe: all three of us, now. Well, as safe as one could be in Gilead.

The SUV pulled up the driveway into the house and automated gate closed.

I was supposed to be proud of the position I had. But I was nothing more than a glorified gate attendant. It suited the coward I had been. I wished I had stood up for Darcy’s rights more, for all women’s rights. I wish I had been more of a feminist and realized the impact of them not being safe actually was. I wish I had fought against these tyrants. But I hadn’t. 

For the handmaids that were brought in and out of these gates, I was the one that was irredeemable, the one that should have been sent to Tennessee to die of radiation poisoning after being worked to death.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finals week for me! I am so stressed out right now, but I realized I have been neglecting this story, and I apologize. I hope you enjoy!

The seats of the GMC Yukon were warm. The Republic had spared no expense for the commanders.

Of course, the driver didn’t even acknowledge me. He was busy listening to the Sunday morning church service on the radio. Everything was censored these days.

Aunt Lydia hobbled up to the backdoor of the car and stumbled up into the car.

“You will be grateful for your new assignment,” she said to me. “I expect nothing but a pious and compliant young woman in this house. If I hear of any disrespect or disobedience, you will be punished.”

I didn’t respond. They hadn’t physically punished me, asides from the ear tag. But the one time I told them to screw themselves, this evil little toad woman had rounded up three other scared girls, and hand their bare feet cuffed in front me. Then, the other Marthas went around with sticks, whipping their feet. She had held my head and forced me to watch it.

“The only reason this isn’t you is because you’re expecting,” she whispered in my ear. “You will watch. Your disobedience results in everyone else’s pain. Do you understand me?”   
Her voice had been chilling. I had hated Professor Umbridge in the Harry Potter books, but this woman, who was so similar, struck a fear in me I had never felt before.

I hadn’t mouthed off again since, but it hadn’t stopped her. When I refused to name my baby’s father, she had done it again. And again. I had finally just said it was a rapist in an alley, which had been a huge mistake. The group punishments had stopped, but then the Marthas crowded around me, telling me I was asking for it. I had been dressed like a ‘slut’ when I had been detained (I had been wearing a short babydoll-style maternity dress), and they did it to me because I had the audacity to flaunt my body. My breasts should be covered at all times, my cleavage should never show. Since I was about twelve, I had struggled to hide my cleavage, teachers had yelled at me about not adhering to the dress code due to that alone. I didn’t know where the hell to put it. Of course, my rapist was so turned on, he had pursued me and done what men just do. He was not responsible for his actions. I was. The other Handmaid recruits had been pushed to join in on the ridicule. I had forced some tears and faked a breakdown to get them to stop.

We went down a suburban street in Boston, and it looked so similar to before: there were fallen leaves in the yard, a New England fall, and luxury cars lining the block. The houses were huge, most gated and had a military guard out in front. This was the commander’s row, probably. But one eerie thing was the lack of writing appearing outside. 

Of course, there were street names, but that was it. The rest were symbols. Reading and writing had been outlawed for women. I had been pretty stupid not to try to go to Canada when Jane and the other women in my lab had gone. Maybe I’d be in Canada now, but then again, maybe I’d be on the wall. Two days after I had been “released” from work, seeing as women were no longer allowed to own property, bank accounts, or to have rights, military agents had burst into Mom and Darren’s brownstone. It had happened so fast, I hadn’t known what to do, I just ran downstairs as I heard a gunshot. I found Mom screaming, cradling Darren. Darren had raised me, and gotten me into science. Darren had been a microsurgeon, and had done gender reassignment surgeries. They said he was aiding a crime against God before the revolution. I stood there, stunned, as the men with guns grabbed Mom and dragged her out the door. My baby bump had been showing through my dress, and they weren’t as forceful with me, but still detained me.

“We’ve got a fresh one,” someone had said. “You’re going to come with us, sweetheart, or we’ll find a way to drag you and you won’t like it.”

They cuffed me and loaded me into the back of a truck with a few other young women. The engine started up and they raided a few more houses, and other women were put in the truck bed. I wanted to know where Mom was. What was happening to Darren’s body? Was anybody going to answer our questions? I was too stunned to respond.

We were put on a school bus by some armed guards, not allowed bathroom breaks. We were given a bucket to pee in, no privacy. The smell was awful. The bus pulled up to the reeducation center, which had been a high school gym, and the guards shouted at us to get off in a single file line. That’s where they had tagged us like barnyard animals. We weren’t given toiletries or cots or anything, but the Marthas emerged and started shouting questions at us. The point was to exhausted us, to start breaking us. The women who weren’t currently pregnant didn’t get more than 4 hours of sleep at a day, we were usually woken up by banging pots and pans, and then forced to pray for an hour, then allowed a few more hours of prayer. They allowed me time to sleep up to six hours, but that was it. It was torture for all of us. They wanted compliant females.

And this is what this commander was getting.

A complaint female with a working uterus.

I wasn’t much else to them. My education and work history didn’t mean anything anymore.

The guard in battle dress uniform let us through the gate into the commander’s house. My new prison. I tried to see his face, but it was unfamiliar. I had a wild hope it was Steve, but what good would that do for us, now? If Steve admitted to fathering Sarah Katherine, one or the both of us would get killed.

“You’ve been assigned to this family. Since you’re restarted your menses, dear, we know when your fertile period is, and the family is ready to take you in as a Handmaid. Remember the awful, horrible sins you committed and why you are here to redeem yourself. Make yourself useful to the head Martha and the wife of the commander. I will come by often for a progress report, and you will bring your milk you pump daily to the .”

“What am I going to be called?” I asked Aunt Lydia, although I knew better: speak only when spoken to.

“Ofbrock.”

* * *

The commander I was serving was one of the top Commanders in Gilead: Brock Rumslow. He greeted us at the entrance with the head Martha welcomed us into the house. 

“Commander, blessed be the fruit,” Aunt Lydia greeted him.

“May the Lord open,” he replied. I shivered slightly. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You as well,” she said. “Are you cold, Ofbrock?”   
“A little,” I admitted.

“We’ve got a fire started in the kitchen hearth,” the head Martha said.

“Wait just a moment, I want to see her up close,” Commander Rumslow said. He walked slowly around me, scrutinizing my appearance. “Can we take her cape off?”

“She’s perfectly healthy, Commander. One of the healthiest Handmaids we’ve obtained. She even gave birth not but three months ago,” Aunt Lydia answered. 

He pinched my chin, lifting my face so he could look into my eyes as Aunt Lydia disrobed me, leaving me to stand in the long-sleeved red dress and habit. She removed the blinders from my head. Even though I had clothes on, I felt like I had been stripped bare.

He was older than I thought. He was handsome, sure, probably very handsome, but just that he was a commander and believed in this system made my skin crawl. His eyes were dead and cold. I knew this man would have no sympathy for me. “She has nice skin and bone structure. Nice hair,” he tugged a stray lock of my hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear.

_ Ugh… _

“She has strong, child-bearing hips. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl, no c-section, no cutting,” Aunt Lydia added, as if I were livestock. “She recovered beautifully.”

He touched the marker on my ear. It didn’t hurt any more, but it surprised me.

Mrs. Rumslow appeared in the doorway from the kitchen.

“She’s here?” she asked.

“This is our new Handmaid,” Commander Rumslow said. “She seems to be of good stock.”

Mrs. Rumslow was pretty, older than me, but probably not out of childbearing years. But they were childless, hence, why they were being given me. 

“Ofbrock, let me introduce you to your new mistress,” Commander Rumslow said. “This is my wife.” 

“Blessed be the fruit,” I mumbled.

“May the Lord open.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Rumslow,” I said quietly. We were taught never to speak loudly, a huge departure from how I had grown up. I had been from a loud family. I had learned how to make my voice echo from an early age, and we were boisterious and goofy. That had been disciplined out of me in the reeducation center.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Ofbrock. We were just making lunch,” she said. “Will you join us in the kitchen for a meal while we go over the house rules?”

I realized that, while this was an order, I was still expected to respond. “Yes, ma’am, I will.”

“Aunt Lydia?” Mrs. Rumslow asked, head slightly arched to the side, brows raised expectantly.

Aunt Lydia shook her head. “No, I have to get back to the reeducation center. But it was nice seeing you again.”

I followed Mrs. Rumslow into the kitchen. A bowl of stew was at the head of the kitchen table and another one to her left. A Martha was at the stove, stirring the pot. It smelled incredible. Beef had been scarce since the coup, they certainly weren’t going to waste it on us in the reeducation center unless we needed the iron. I had been given red meat a few times to get my iron levels up during pregnancy, but only blood testing proved positive for anemia. Of course, a Commander’s household would have it.0

“You may sit,” she said as she took her seat. I took the seat beside hers. She bowed her head and I copied, she said the blessings over the food. I waited for her to pick up her spoon as well. She was so thin, I wasn’t sure she actually would. I refrained from reaching for my own.

“I keep a tight ship,” she said. “I expect you to be up and dressed, ready for breakfast by seven o’clock. While you have been given to my husband and myself, your job is not just to grow our baby: you are expected to be useful and productive with running this household, as long as you are able to. You are expected to assist me in the garden and assist Lorelei, our head Martha, with the household chores and errands. When I have company, you are not to speak to them unless you are spoken to, and you are never to look someone in the eye unless you are requested to. If you are disobedient, we will punish you in the ways that Aunt Lydia deemed fit. If your behavior is poor enough, we’ll send you back to the reeducation center for harsher discipline. If your behavior continues to be rebellious, expect to be sent to the Colonies. We have no problem with that. You should be there right now for your brokeness, but the system has agreed that you have something useful to redeem yourself with. Now, let’s begin with lunch.”

She finally picked up her soup spoon and delicately dipped it into the stew, getting a few drops of broth in it. She blew on it delicately, and carefully fit past her lips, like she had already eaten and wasn’t hungry and this was foreign. I tried not to be a hog and I took a spoonful. It was like ambrosia on my tongue. Lorelei could cook.

“This is the only meal you will eat with me or Commander Rumslow. You are to always eat with the servants, and to remember that you  _ are  _ a servant in this household. While we no longer read, I do recite bible verses at my husband’s discretion, and I expect you to learn them as well as you work. ‘ _ Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.’ _ Ephesians, VI, 5-7. This is the first verse I expect you to learn, it is the most important for our servants in this household. You have three days to be able to recite it for me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled. I didn’t mention that I had been raised with in an Atheist home and that both my stepfather and mother had been Jewish-descended. I wondered if she could tell just by looking at me. Most people could. 

“You will want for nothing if you are obedient in this house,” she said. “You are blessed, despite the sin you committed that made you fall. Remember how lucky you are to be in this household.”

Lucky. I didn’t feel lucky. My baby had been stolen from me, and my entire identity revolved around that I was a fallen woman with a working reproductive system, even my name and degrees had been stripped from me.

* * *

After lunch, I was sent upstairs to my room to unpack and take a nap. I needed to be well-rested, eat well, get plenty of exercise because I needed to be physically healthy enough to carry a baby. Lorelei came up and assisted me with unpacking and gave me a shift to sleep in. My new room was plain, it had some curtains, but that was really the only decoration asides from a bedside table, a lamp, and a bed. There were more clothes in the closet, more of the same, different red dresses made of differing fabrics for the different seasons, different shoes too, and an adjoining bathroom, but no door to it. My bedroom did have a door to the stairs, though. “The lady of the house expects you to be neat and orderly at all times. Shoes go in the closet,” Lorelei said. “And all dirty clothes go in the laundry basket in the bathroom, never on the floor.”

I nodded.

“If you follow the rules, you’ll be happy here,” she said. “This is one of the best households to work in.”

She left me alone in my room, and I pulled back the covers, trying not to cry, thinking of Sarah Katherine. I rubbed my fingers along my belly, feeling the lingering stretch marks and slack skin, the only outwardly visible sign that she and I had been one for a time. I wondered where she was, now. Who were those people who adopted her? Did she miss me? Did she need me? Was the milk they sent to her enough? Was she gaining enough weight, was she jaundiced, colicky?

I had asked those questions in my own mind about Steve while I had been pregnant. Was he safe, alive? Imprisoned? Sent to the Colonies? Was he being fed enough, being allowed to sleep enough? The tears leaked out fresh when I thought of him. Was he on the wall? Had they figured it out? Was he being punished or exonerated? Was he looking for me? Were our fights so bad that he didn’t want to look for me or the baby?

Maybe he didn’t care about me any more. Men fathered children all the time and walked away. My own father had. All the time I had spent with Steve, it hadn’t seemed like he was that kind of man. The way he made love to me indicated that he cared. The last time we had been together had been after a huge argument between us. I had known I was pregnant, and he had brushed it off as not a big deal, and that had just infuriated me. I didn’t like these rebels from the Tea Party who were lurking around and making threats online. He said they were just a bunch of idiots, not a big deal. When I screamed at him that my rights were on the line, he had gotten offended, then angry. He stormed out the door of my apartment in Brooklyn. I sat there, angry, stewing in my own head. After an hour and a half, he came back.

“Okay, maybe I’m not giving you a fair chance,” he admitted. “But these rebels, they’re idiots. The laws they’re passing to take away your rights aren’t going to stick. The Supreme Court’s going to overrule it soon anyway. They’re just ammosexuals with tiny dicks that don’t understand the Bill of Rights, except the Second Amendment.”

The ammosexual comment made me smirk and then laugh. 

“I made you laugh, at least,” he pointed out.

“Yeah,” I muttered.

“This is America. We’ve got protection of our individual rights. You’ll be back in the lab in no time.”

We had watched an episode of  _ the Office _ , ate ice cream from the carton, and discussed baby names. I joked I need more of the ice cream because I was eating for two and I told him about the upcoming OB GYN appointments and he said he wanted to be there. When I started to get sleepy, I took a shower and washed my flat (at the time) stomach, imagining how huge I’d be in a few months.

I climbed into the bed with him and rested my head on his shoulder. He kissed me, gently, and then the intensity build. He tugged off the spaghetti strap of my tank top, exposing a breast, touching it, cupping it and feeling it, making me sigh and moan, his hips grinding into my thigh, where I could feel his length hardening through his shorts. We kissed for a few more minutes like he played with my nipple and I rubbed his back with my barehands, melding together, but he pulled away.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t want to put my weight on you,” he had said. “You know... The baby and all.”

I let him rolled over onto his back, and I climbed atop him. The time he spent on base, I missed him. I missed his touch, his kisses, the way he knew my pleasure points. We talked all the time, but that wasn’t the same. Before I knew it, we were naked, grinding on each other. And there was no need to worry about condoms or birth control. Maybe pregnancy would be easy, nice, save for the morning sickness I was having. I felt his stiff cock slide into me and the simultaneous sound of both of us groaning. I reached for my clit, and we began to move together.

I loved his raw, unsheathed cock inside me. The world faded away when we were together. The stuff that got me worked up on the news networks ceased to exist. Steve would protect me from it until all this nonsense was over.

Afterwards, I ran to the bathroom to pee and get a wet washcloth to wipe us down. In the bed, held me and stroked my hair, soft kisses on my temple and eyelid. “I love you, doll,” he said softly. “And I’m going to adore this baby. It’s half you, I don’t know how I won’t be crazy about him.”

“Or her. We could have a girl.”

“Imagine me, being a daddy to a little girl! I will never sleep again!”

“You’re already my daddy,” I teased. “Ungh, daddy, do it again!” I pumped my hips against him, and he laughed.

I was only four weeks along at that time. It had been so innocent and so naive and hopeful.

Now, we were in a totalitarian hell. My child had been ripped from my arms and given to people I didn’t know. It was highly unlikely that I’d ever see her sweet face again. She’d never know me. Would she want to? I was a holy sex slave, forced into bed with these couples by the church/government, prepared to give up any pregnancy I had against my will, no one was giving me any information and I craved it.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive.


	4. Chapter 4

Screaming.

That’s all I heard these days.

Mrs. Pierce had no idea what she was doing to calm this baby down, and it was miserable.

I sometimes wondered what had happened to Darcy. She was smart. Jane and her friends at the lab had escaped to Canada. Maybe she was in Canada. I’d never know, outside communication wasn’t allowed in Gilead, yet. Information was tightly controlled, lest it make the Republic look bad. I wondered if she had had the baby, or worse, had she been forced to give the baby up? I tried to run a timeline in my head, and she should have had the baby a few months ago. 

For a moment, the baby stopped screaming.

I breathed a sigh of relief at the silence.

And then, it started again.

I checked my watch.

One more hour. One more hour of listening to this poor kid cry.

Her name was Jennifer, and rumor had it that she had been an orphan baby, given up to the highest bidders. Of course, the Pierces had the money to buy a baby. I wasn’t certain how old this one was. Had she bonded with her biological mother and then been separated? No wonder the baby was screaming.

This had gone on for weeks.

The only reason no one had made a noise complaint was because this baby was a baby. Babies weren’t being born too often and it was horrible faux pas to complain about this. 

Both Marthas had been worked ragged. This screaming was enough to grate anyone’s nerves. At least I was outside in the freezing cold, away from it, although my butt felt like a block of frozen ice out here, despite a pair of long Johns under my pants.

I knew I was going to be a father. I had fathered a kid. I wasn’t sure if the pregnancy had survived: miscarriage rates had skyrocketed in the last twenty years. There was no way I’d have made a good father if I had a kid that screamed that much nonstop.

The Yukon backed down the driveway. I opened the gate so that it could exit, but once the hood ornament cleared the gate, it stopped and Bucky rolled down the window.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” I asked.

“Somebody kill me,” he whispered, gesturing towards the house. “Not even earplugs drown it out.”

“Should you even be taking the car out?” I snorted. There had been a major oil shortage since the coup. Bucky pulled a doob out his pocket and lit up, he handed it to me, but I shook my head. Marijuana was highly illegal in Gilead, it could land you life in prison.

“Hey, desperate times, man,” he answered, shrugged. “Wanna get in and warm up?”

I looked both ways and decided to climb into the passenger seat. The seat warmer was on, and it felt like heaven on my balls. He turned up the radio station, and the fuzzy death metal filled the speakers from the pirate radio station, a thankful act of mercy from our neighbors to the North. They couldn’t silence the Canadian radio station, although they had rooted out and destroyed the pirate stations on land. A few broadcast from old ships anchored out right past international waters for a while, but then went silent. We could only assume they had been rooted out as well. The Jesus rock that filled the airwaves these days was so awful, I just went without music altogether. They had even banned iTunes in Gilead.

“What are they doing to the kid?” I asked.

Bucky shrugged. “She’s got a really bad diaper rash. Probably the croup. The Marthas both called out today.”

“Avoidance. Good idea,” I noted.

“I’m thinking about calling out, too,” he said. “The baby doctor called and said he doesn’t know what’s wrong with her.”

“I do,” I said. “She’s probably having attachment trauma. Mom told me about it when she was in the pediatric NICU.”

“God, kids man. Maybe it’s a good thing the birth rates have plummeted, I’d make a lousy dad if I had to put up with this.”

I knew this car was probably bugged. Even though the music was loud, there was a chance they’d hear what we were saying. And Gilead had little patience for traitors.

“There’s a Martha in Cambridge who used to be a neonatal doctor, one of the best in the world,” Bucky said. “They’re calling her in tonight once the sun goes down, but we aren’t allowed to talk about it. I was sent to tell you by Pierce himself.”

“Who’s bringing her?” I asked.

“An econoperson named Sam Wilson who gets some work as a driver,” he said. “He’s volunteered. If he’s pulled into the drive and that’s not the name on the ID, don’t let him in.”

“Got it,” I said. Sam Wilson. Easy name to remember, but I entered it into my phone’s notepad just for a record.

“Look, I’ve got to pull the car in, get out.”

“See ya later, sweetheart.”

“Bye, old man.”

I got out of the warm, comfortable car with awesome metal, into the frigid cold. The sun was about to go down and the cold would get worse. I had to remind myself to wear my heaviest set of longjohns under my uniform for tomorrow.

As if right on time, a mystery SUV that looked pretty new came down the street slowly. I knew all the license tags of the people on this street. Hey, my job was boring, I didn’t have a lot to do. The lights turned into the driveway, and I saw the silhouette of a woman in Martha habit in the passenger seat, and saw the driver’s face as he rolled down the window.

“Blessed be the fruit.”

“May the Lord open. ID, please?” I asked.

The dude, a black guy with a serious face, produced a driver’s license. 

SAMUEL WILSON

I opened the gate as instructed and he pulled the car in.

My shift was almost up at 9 o’clock.

I realized I had started ignoring the baby cries. I realized she was still screaming, really working on making her voice echo off the walls.

I was so relieved with my replacement arrived.

* * *

**_DARCY_ **

I sat in the bathtub and shivered despite the warmth. The water heater worked here, it wasn’t broken like in the reeducation center. But I had to ask for everything. They had broken that from us. I was told to be grateful. I wasn’t sure what to be grateful for.

Tonight, I was twelve days out from the start of my period. It had been examined and tracked, and pads had been given and I had been expected to turn them over to Lorelei after use (disgusting, I know, but they were in plastic ziploc baggies).I knew they were going back to one of Aunt Lydia’s contacts. My period and body were no longer mine. Gilead took that from me. I had no privacy. There were men in high places that were reviewing my cycle records, my medical records.

It had ended a few days ago, and I was aware that seventeen days out, I was going to be at my most fertile. This was supposed to be a mystery to me, but I had been aware of it before the coup. I had to remember this and carry it over, even if I couldn’t write it down anymore.

“Let’s get you out of this tub before you prune,” Lorelei said, walking into my bathroom, holding a towel for me. The door had been removed. Granted, you couldn’t see into it through the hallway, but they didn’t give me a lot of privacy. The lock on my door handle was on the outside. I couldn’t lock myself in, but they could, but hadn’t so far. Even masturbation was forbidden in Gilead. I was a prisoner here. She helped me up, and I pressed my hand, unwittingly, to my stretch-marked covered stomach. The towel was wrapped around me, patting me dry efficiently and without emotion. She usually handed me my granny panties and the bra that didn’t offer a lot of support. I had always had big breasts, they had been a source for unwanted attention in jr high, but I got into appreciating them, knowing the power they had. Until now. I had been slut-shamed for my cleavage at the reeducation center continually.

She only handed me my bra and my clothes.

My underwear was not considered. This household did not want me wearing it tonight, it was unspoken. I dreaded his hands, his unbidden cock, pushed inside me, his cum… ugh. I shivered at the thought. A roiling engine of fear and disgust rolled around in my stomach.

“We’re bringing up dinner for you. You probably want to eat before the ceremony,” Lorelei said, zipping up my dress.

I wanted to puke.

I picked at the food, but I knew most of it wouldn’t go down. I ended up flushing most of it so that it appeared that I had most of the chicken breast and two-thirds of the potatoes. Handmaids had to eat.

The lights in the house suddenly went out.

The ceremony was beginning.

I grabbed my shawl, wrapping myself up in it like it would protect me from this perverted ceremony. My mother had had one like this that Bubbe Sophia had made after she arrived in the US after World War II and the concentration camps. She had been through much worse, and had survived. I would survive, too. This wasn’t nearly so bad, right? 

Right?

The idea that the shawl was in a trash sack somewhere or in a dump just upset me to think about.

I saw the light coming up the staircase, slowly. Mrs. Rumslow’s face shone in the glow of an old oil lamp, the kind that was kind of shaped like a gravy boat, she came down the hall, expression unreadable. My stomach rolled over.

“It’s time,” she told me.

This was part of the ceremony.

I followed her down the hallway as Hagar had followed her mistress Sarai to Abrahm’s tent. She walked down the stairs and I went right behind her, knees shaking, leaving the apartment over the garage. She lead me through the house and up to the main upstairs to the main bedroom. It was empty, and richly decorated, but bland in color. To imagine anybody slept and made love in a room like this was horrific. There didn’t seem to be anything, like mail or stray shoes or pieces of jewelry laid out on the dresser. Everything was neat, and orderly and clean in the darkness.

She set the oil lamp down on a nightstand table.

“As I open to my husband, you shall now open for me. As Hagar did for Sarai, shall you conceive a child,” she said, anointing my forehead with oil.

She sat down on the end of the bed, her legs parted. It was my turn to lay down on the bed, my head on her stomach.

_ Just close your eyes and think about Steve and Sarah and this’ll all be over before you know it, _ I told myself, squeezing my eyes shut.

I heard a door open, and I instinctively turned my head to see Commander Rumslow coming out of the attached bathroom. He was fully dressed. I was the only person here missing a garment of clothing that I knew of.

“As Sarai said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her,” Rumslow said. “Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.’ And now, it is time to plant my seed. I know this is awkward, but try to relax.”

Mrs. Rumslow gripped my hands, and the Commander unzipped his fly. I closed my eyes, thinking of that morning in Brooklyn after the first time I had invited Steve to spend the night, how quiet, but happy it had been. So content. He was so perfect and wonderful, and the sex had been amazing. He had always requested my consent, never went without it. We had had coffee at the coffee shop down the street, holding hands, walking together, not saying anything. I had known him for a few weeks and made him wait for me. And he had. We had these goofy smiles on our faces as we stepped in and ordered coffee together, which he paid for, saying the date wasn’t quite over. I had worn my red scarf I had hacked together under Bubbe Sophia’s tutelage. If the yarn hadn’t been so chunky, it’ve looked awful and uneven, but it looked looked sophisticated, despite my stupid stitches. He kept on looking at it, and tugged at the end at the little bistro table we had sat at. We didn’t talk, just exchanged smirks and grins. I felt beautiful and safe and loved, even though we hadn’t used that word yet.

That memory was shattered by the feeling of my skirt being lifted and a cock being shoved inside my entrance. He wasn’t rough, but I felt the nauseating tingle of violation that comes with rape. He wasn’t touching my body with any part of himself but his cock.

I thought of Steve, the amount of coffee we had had together, the number of croissants we had shared, the walks we had taken, the times we had made love---

No, I wouldn’t think about that right now. Right now, it would taint the memory to think of him during this perverted act disguised as a religious, holy ceremony. Maybe Steve and I didn’t have a ceremony and a piece of paper, but what we had had, what we did together in bed, it was the purest emotion and act I had ever experienced. I wanted to remember Steve as purely as I could, even though he may as well have forgotten about me and the pregnancy.

The commander thrust into me a few more times and I felt him cum with a soft grunt.

“That’s it,” he said softly.

“So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne,” Mrs. Rumslow said. “Blessed be the fruit.”

“May the Lord open,” the Commander said.

I swallowed the bile in my throat.

He disappeared out the door.

The ceremony was over. Mrs. Rumslow threw my hands aside as the houselights came back on.

“You can leave, now,” she said rustling under me, getting out from under my torso.

I got up, adjusting my skirts, sick at the feeling of his cum inside me, I ran from the room.


End file.
